Lightner, a consulting engineer, is married to City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner, who is finishing a second term and cannot run for the office again. He filed papers to run a week before the deadline for the June 7 primary.

“Federal copyright infringement is blatantly apparent when comparing the underlying code and content of the Lightner website with that of the Ellis website,” the letter states. “You stole the code and content from the Ellis website and used it to create the Lightner website.”

The letter alleges the website was copied and pasted from the Ellis website and is thus “blatant intellectual property infringement.”

Lightner told Times of San Diego that he didn’t believe his website infringed on Ellis’ design, but made changes to his site anyway.